Oz Linden in last Friday’s TPV Dev group meeting was saying they are determined that the JIRA will NOT go back to the way it was pre-2012-Change. There will be strict limits on user-to-user comments.
When specifically asked how the Lab would be enforcing those limits he repeated what we already know from the official announcement.
Oz has pointed out they will be managing the JIRA by the rule set, meaning the JIRA permissions system. There will not be issue-by-issue moderation. I take this to mean they are not wanting to devote engineer’s/programmer’s time to JIRA moderation. But, I suspect the Lindens will take faster action against individuals that abuse the system this time around. But, no Linden is saying that. We will have to wait to see what they do.
JIRA Voting – Oz was asked if the Lab would be paying attention to votes on issues. His answer is no and to the best of his knowledge the Lab never has considered issue votes when choosing what to fix or setting priorities. They choose which item to work on based on what they think is best for Second Life. That may or may not coincide with the voting.
I will say that I have seen SL users flood JIRA items with votes, watches, and comments as a show of their pain from an issue. One could speculate that had an influence on the Lab. But, it also may be that it only changed how the Lab communicated their effort to fix the problem. By that I mean a serious issue might not get everyone’s attention within the Lab. Only a small number of or possibly a single Linden would be assigned to the fix. The rest of staff might never become aware of the problem. When asked about in user group they would be clueless as it simply is not what they are currently dealing with.
On large issues we have seen additional Lindens familiar with the issue show up for UG meetings to answer questions. To me this indicates user votes, watches, and comments alert the Lindens to heat building in the community over an issue. They are probably talking about it in-house and asking who is doing what so they can answer when asked. Others are probably telling their associates, so they don’t get blindsided. These are behaviors common in the work place. I see it as more of a how are we going to handle this than a what do we do question.
That a team is alerting its members and work associates does necessarily mean the commotion changed or influenced a decision. Nor does it mean it didn’t. So, while I can feel what Oz is saying, I still believe the votes, watches, comments, and riots in SL do have an effect. But, the Lab is not controlled or overly influenced by them.